Jason Sudeikis (born September 18, 1975) is an American actor and comedian.
Sudeikis was born Daniel Jason Sudeikis in Fairfax, Virginia, and is of partial Lithuanian descent. He moved to Overland Park, Kansas at a young age and attended Brookridge Elementary School before transferring to a Catholic school. He went to Rockhurst High School in 1991, and later transferred to Shawnee Mission West High School, where he was a point guard for the boys' basketball team, graduating in 1994. (He referenced this fact in an October 20, 2007 SNL sketch involving LeBron James.)
Sudeikis is married to actress and 30 Rock writer Kay Cannon and is the nephew of actor and frequent 1990s-era Saturday Night Live guest star George Wendt - known for his role as "Norm" from Cheers. He has two sisters, Lindsay and Kristin. Lindsay is a nun, who currently resides with a convent in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Kristin is a budding actress and dancer in New York City.
In 2003, Sudeikis was hired as a sketch writer for Saturday Night Live at the recommendation of Jeff Richmond, husband of then head writer Tina Fey, when he was performing at The Second City in Las Vegas and later, in May 2005, became a featured player on the show. He became famous for his impersonation of American Idol winner Taylor Hicks, as well as one-half of the A-Hole duo with Kristen Wiig. He was upgraded to repertory status at the beginning of the show's 32nd season on September 30, 2006.
Before getting hired by Saturday Night Live, he performed at ComedySportz (now Comedy City) in Kansas City, where he co-founded a sketch comedy troupe called Der Monkenpickle. After moving to Chicago, Sudeikis studied at iO (formerly ImprovOlympic) where he was one of the founding members of the legendary long-form team JTS Brown, whose form is now part of the curriculum in Level 5 classes at iO. He was later cast in The Second City's National Touring Company and has performed with Boom Chicago in Amsterdam. While with Second City, he became a founding member of Second City Las Vegas. He has also studied at ImprovOlympic and the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago, and frequently performs at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York.
Sudeikis had a recurring role on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock in early 2007, appearing in a total of seven episodes. He played Floyd, a love interest of Tina Fey's character Liz Lemon. He made another appearance as Floyd in a 2008 episode.
He also plays the role of extreme right-wing talk show host Richard Bastion on the fictional radio station WKTT, in Grand Theft Auto IV.
He was recently in the Cameron Diaz/Ashton Kutcher led comedy What Happens in Vegas
Jason will also appear in the upcoming film The Rocker (film).
